Underwriting in the insurance industry often relies on voluntarily provided biographical information regarding a customer, followed by an assessment of risk based on past claim histories available to a particular company. Because underwriting processes and claim history data, containing personally identifiable information, confidential health information, and proprietary business processes, companies prudently protect and isolate such data. However, in the absence of a full-picture of a prospective customer including all of the available public and private data relevant to, an assessment of underwriting risk may result in substandard and inefficient determinations.
Inaccurate risk assessments may impact availability or affordability of insurance coverage or financial services for some individuals and organizations. Thus, opening the aperture of available data used in underwriting risk assessments, while carefully controlling access to private data allows more accurate risk assessments, improved availability of services, and improving affordability of insurance coverage for users. For organizations providing insurance and financial services, improved risk assessments may increase an accessible customer pool, and provide a better perspective of long term of expected cash flows and lower discount rates associated with those cash flows.
Social media data, both in the public and private space, provides an additional source of risk assessment as well as a variable in correlation to verify provided biographical data. For example, private or publically available social media, when aggregated may provide individual indicators or cumulative effect to assess a mortality risk. Such assessment of mortality risk may provide a threshold for underwriting a life insurance policy, or indicators of risky behavior may prevent underwriting of an auto-insurance policy.
Aggregation engines may collate such private and public social media data on a large scale across a variety of social media outlets to provide a more comprehensive picture. These aggregation engines may require opting in with consent to collect private social media data on a voluntary or temporary basis, or may mine data from publicly available sources on a large scale. Opting to provide access to private social media may require a temporary login credentials, authorized by an account owner in accordance with social media outlet user terms of condition.
Mining public data may require biographical information provided by a prospective customer to correlate with publically available data using a number of markers to establish an identity to a reasonable threshold. On a whole, whether privately or publicly available, the aggregation engine may generate an overall numeric score to compare against a risk assessment threshold. Calculation of the numeric score may relate to a number of variables weighted by the presence of social media activity markers, such as participation in sporting events, wellness initiatives, smoking, alcohol consumption, or other factors that may impact suitability for underwriting an insurance product.
Traditional underwriting processes have typically included an interview between a providing organization and a prospective customer, where biographical information is provided, and an assessment of risk is performed. In some instances, this may be followed-up or preceded by a medical examination to verify or provide information required to perform a risk assessment for an insurance product. The recent availability of wearable device activity data may supplement or in some instances replace more traditional medical assessments in a less invasive and more convenient way. Such wearable data may exist in the public space, where the data may be mined by aggregation engines, or privately opted-in using social media outlets or provided otherwise electronically. This wearable activity data may likewise provide untraditional markers that correlate with provided biographical information or indicate lifestyle habits that suggest or prohibit underwriting insurance products.
In some instances, a mere name and email address may provide sufficient identity information to publically mine available social media outlets to source activity data. Such data may act as a triage first step in an underwriting decision-making process, or fall later in the process to verify and confirm information provided directly by a customer. Still further, organizations may leverage publicly mined and opted-in private social media data to suggest or solicit additional services, or make changes to existing services. Such data may exist on a large scale and require significant computing resources to access, analyze, and generate suggested next steps or prospective product offerings.
Exemplary embodiments may include public or private social media markers for lack of tobacco use allowing a savings for a customer, participation in sporting events such as 5K races or checking-in at sporting events or fitness centers to assess lowered underwriting risk for life insurance policies, etc. Still further, publicly available criminal records, or private credit assessments may indicate activities that prohibit or increase a risk to an underwriting decision for insurance or financial products. Alternatively, use of markers and indicator data may function as a correlation factor to provided data that strengthens or weakens a underwriting risk assessment once a prior assessment has been performed using traditional methods.